The ramblings of a Toxic mind...

Post Olympic syndrome…

Aug142012

…or is it a disorder?

Flicking through the channels and there’s no handball, no water polo, not even two heavy, hairy, Eastern European blokes wrestling. Is it Greco-Roman or freestyle? Oh they’re women, right, and she’s wrapped around the others leg so it’s freestyle.

The travesty of the closing ceremony – where was the celebration of 50 years of British music? – and the lifeless corpse of Jaques Rogge during his grudging speech – the woman that carried the sheet of paper out with his speech on it, at least Coe could do that for himself, was she working Rogge with her foot? – can’t take away from the success of the London games.

Many top moments that have all been given top 5, top 10 status by many broadcasters and media outlets so figure might as well join the party with my own. In no particular order…

Bradley Wiggins: Storming the road time trial, to destroy the field in front of a huge crowd, then perched on that throne – in front of Hampton Court Palace or that castle as he called it – unzipped and holding up two V signs. Victory or peace?

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Dani King, Laura Trott, Joanna Roswell: Three young women who took to the velodrome track three times in two days and each time destroyed their own world record in the 3k team pursuit – making it six record breaking races in a row – to win gold. It’s as many world records by one small team in 2 days as the athletics saw in the whole games.

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Katherine Copeland and Sophie Hosking: As with above the pair destroyed the field in the women’s lightweight double sculls. So far ahead of the rest that Copeland couldn’t believe what they’d done looking around, open mouthed, for another boat to be in front of them. Then as her partner turned around it dawned and she gave one of the best reactions in the whole of the games we’re going to be on a stamp.

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Nicola Adams: The smile on the face of the little fighter from Leeds, as she celebrated after the final bell had gone, turning to each side of the ring and giving a punch as she knew she’d won the women’s flyweight boxing gold was priceless. You can’t imagine she’s stopped smiling yet.

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Sir Chris Hoy and his mum: Third moment from the cycling, well there was just so much to chose from but Sir Chris’ second gold of these games, his sixth overall, in the keirin as he put everything he had left into making sure the second placed German couldn’t get over the top of him deserves the spot because of what it meant. And because of the reaction of Hoy’s mother who switched between having to watch and being unable to watch the unfolding events. Flinching, turning away, looking through her fingers until finally she could relax. You could see what a hell of a relief it was for her.

Of course there was far more than that, all those medals in the velodrome after all and then the non sporting parts of it. Such as France. Though I suppose laughing at France is a national sport. First they have the hump because we beat them in the bid process then their new Napoleon, Francois Hollande got a bit too smug a bit too early talking about winning medals. Where did you finish in the table again dwarfy? Seventh, 34 in total, hell we almost got that in golds alone.

Then there was the Frogs whingeing about Britain cheating at cycling. What with Wiggo’s amazing year, Cav the best sprinter ever and another dominating Olympics on the track. Weren’t the UCI meant to have stopped that? Ah ze magic wheels. As Chris Boardman dead batted away in his deadpan style the same wheels that they’ve used since Athens, eight years ago. Ah, ze are in bags. Er, yes to keep them clean. Ah, ze bikes, yes which you can buy via the website and check out to your heart’s delight, but strangely haven’t.

I suppose in their national sport, taking the Tour de France which they haven’t won in a quarter of a century, along with 7 golds, one silver and bronze to just three silvers will do that to them.

And now we can add laughing at the Aussies as a national sport. Their cricket team is crap, we smashed them in the medal table and London games are now universally considered better than the Sydney games.

So what have we got now after these last two weeks. Well there’s one loathsome, self centred, egomaniac, sticking up for another loathsome, self centred, egomaniac, as Piers Morgan says Kevin Pietersen has been badly done by. Oh do us a favour and both bog off hand in hand into the sunset.

And the return of football. Snarling, cynical, again loathsome, everything that’s wrong with sport after we’ve seen everything that’s right about it all summed up as just a few days after U.S. sprinter Manteo Mitchell ran the final 200 metres of his 4×400 relay with a broken leg, Theo Walcott pulls out of the England friendly with a slightly bruised thigh. Yes, really. You couldn’t make it up.

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